First of all, thank you for the invitation to Cooper Institute to come and present this afternoon. It's wonderful to be able to make this presentation on behalf of Cooper Institute.
I'd like to thank you especially for taking the lid off Leonard Russell. We haven't heard Leonard Russell talk like that since 2005, and he didn't talk like that in 2005. That was a joy, I must say. I was around in 2005, as you can probably guess.
I'll just say a little about Cooper Institute and how we figure into this. Cooper Institute is a community-based social justice collective. We work in communities across Prince Edward Island on social, economic, and ecological issues that are vital to island residents. The objective of all our work—we have deliberately chosen our objective—is the promotion of democracy. It's for the voice of people to come from the people. What we want is a full promotion of democracy in its full meaning.
We are proud members of the P.E.I. coalition for proportional representation, so you might hear a bit of a bias.
We welcomed the opening up of the electoral reform prospects again for P.E.I. It was really important that it be opened up again, because it was not addressed properly and fully in 2005 because of a lot of restrictions, which Leonard brought out. It's also really good to have this question brought up on the federal level.
We long to see the end of the first-past-the-post system—that it's gone, period—and we really hope for proportional representation.
It is surprising and a bit disheartening, however, that both levels of government, if supporting any change—and I'll put the “if” there—seem to be leaning in favour of a preferential ballot, ranked ballot, alternative vote, or whatever you want to call it. In the case of P.E.I., there are signs that, in the midst of all this discussion, the powers within the Liberal and Conservative parties may even be promoting retaining first past the post, which has served them well over the years. The resulting lopsided majorities and absolute power have not served Islanders well. They have served the parties well.
Preferential ballot is not an electoral system. Research shows that this method serves up similar lopsided majorities and absolute power to first past the post. Preferential ballot is merely a mechanism. It should not be on our list. It is not a choice. That's the first point.
Preferential ballot is merely a mechanism, and it can be used within various systems. It's how the votes are counted and the manner in which people actually express their vote, in terms of one, two, or three. It is a helpful mechanism for vote counting in both the winner-take-all systems and the proportional systems. It's a mechanism, not a system. There is no place in the world where ranked ballot or preferential ballot is used as an electoral system. It will be a very accommodating mechanism for us in calculating the results of the P.E.I. plebiscite, so again, it's a mechanism that will be used, but it shouldn't be on our plebiscite ballot.
Some commentators have pointed out that AV even appears to be a partisan solution for one party. The projections are that the Liberals would have won 224 seats in the last election if we had used preferential ballot. When we look at that, we really have to say it's a criticism, and it certainly is not a leaning that we would expect to come from the federal government.
I just have some comments on the plebiscite. A plebiscite, first of all, is a flawed instrument for democratic decision-making on electoral reform. That's our position. First of all, the results of a plebiscite are not binding on the government. People may be shocked. Voters would be really shocked to discover that, once again, their vote means so little.
The choices on the plebiscite ballot involve the creation of new knowledge on the part of voters. New knowledge doesn't come from the top down. It doesn't come from consultations. It doesn't come from lectures, and it doesn't come from displays. It comes from the full engagement of people in their communities and from their own interests. This takes time, it takes resources, and it takes non-interference from the defenders of power.
The other thing about plebiscites is that democracy is not enhanced by resorting to an election-style campaign to convince people to opt for one choice over another, without regard for voters really understanding the advantages and disadvantages of each option for a community's well-being.
We have another situation across the country, but we especially experience it here in P.E.I., which is that the Canadian election culture is, unfortunately, rooted in the mentality of a two-party system, even though we have a history of many parties at the federal level, although not so much at the provincial level. We have a two-party mentality. We hear in P.E.I. a lot, and I'm sure you hear it across the country, that a third or fourth party took the votes away. They took somebody's vote away because they voted for the NDP or the Green Party. That's the language we hear.
The experience of voting Liberal or Conservative, which is P.C. in P.E.I., in a winner-loser sports model, gives us a grim picture of two parties vying with each other for absolute power. We have not just a two-party system mentality but two parties. Any real transition to a democratic and representative democracy will require some serious growing up on the part of political parties. The test of maturity is that they acknowledge that democracy is not about them. Democracy is not about political parties. In a truly democratic electoral system, every person's vote counts. We know all of that.
Something that touches us really deeply, as one of the Atlantic provinces, is the fact that in the federal election, the Liberals won every seat in Atlantic Canada, despite the fact that 40% of the region's voters actually voted for other parties. We have right in front of us here, close to home, an example of the total wipeout of other parties.
Finally, from our perspective, only proportional representation can give us any semblance of opening up true democracy as the voice of people. Once again, we say that this is not only the parties. We must adopt a form of government that truly represents the makeup of a community in terms of gender, ethnicity, country of origin, ability, and race.
Thank you very much.
